Academy-award-winning documentary film producer Alex Gibney (Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, and Taxi to the Dark Side) has made a 90-minute documentary based on THCB contributor Maggie Mahar’s book Money-Driven Medicine. Bill Moyers will be showing a shorter 55 minute version of the film on his PBS show, Bill Moyer’s Journal, Friday, August 28 (Check local listings for time.)

Institutions can buy the DVD of the 90 minute version here  or by calling 877-811-7495. Individuals can rent a digital version of the film for home use anytime after August 28 for $2.99

“Money-Driven Medicine is one of the strongest documentaries I have seen in years and could not be more timely.  The more people who see and talk about it, the more likely we are to get serious and true health care reform.”—Bill Moyers

“Few Americans appreciate how the health care system is gamed against physicians’ professional commitment to focus only on their patients’ best interests.  This outstanding film helps us all understand why reform is essential.” – Elliott S. Fisher, MD, Director, Dartmouth Center for Health Policy Research

By ROBERT ROWLEY, MD

This is the second of a 3-part series, where we dig a little deeper into the questions of medical data in the Internet “cloud.” In the first part, we reviewed issues of data safety – how to guard against loss of data. In this second part, we will review data security – how to guard against data theft. The third part will focus on privacy and ensuring that only the right people can access the right data. 


DATA SECURITY

A review of issues around medical records ownership and protection shows that medical records are the property of those who prepare them (medical professionals), and not the property of those about whom they are concerned (patients), although patients generally have a right to review them, demand copies of them and demand their confidentiality. With limited and specific exceptions, consent is required in order to disclose such information to others. So, how does one create a framework of security that protects the confidentiality of such records against unauthorized breach?

Continue reading "Medical Date in the Internet "cloud" (part 2) – Data Security"

By ROBERT ROWLEY, MD

The question of data security
in a “brave new world” of cloud-based Electronic Health Records (EHRs),
Personal Health Records, and iPhone and other smartphone apps that
could transmit personal health information, has attracted the attention
of many. Web-based services – so-called “cloud computing” – are not inherently secure.
Such technology is focused more on widespread reach and
interconnectedness rather than on making sure that the connections and
the data are foolproof. Yet much of our personal information, such as
banking information, is housed electronically and accessed through the
web – we have become so accustomed to it that we seldom think very much
about it. Personal health information, moreover, is protected by law:
HIPAA, which is focused around physician and hospital-centered
recordkeeping, and now ARRA, which extends HIPAA-like protection to
patient-centered Personal Health Records as well.In a previous blog post,
we reviewed (at a high level) the ways in which special attention to
security and privacy can create what is needed to house personal health
information in a hosted, “cloud”-based setting. In this series of
posts, we will dig a little deeper into these questions. This first
part addresses the issues of data safety, and protection against loss
and “down-time.” The second part will address the question of security
between connections (making sure “the pipes don’t leak”). The third
part will focus on privacy and ensuring that only the right people can
access the right data.

Continue reading "Medical Data in the Internet "Cloud" (part 1) – Data Safety"

By KATHLEEN M. BOOZANG

Health reform that focuses exclusively on health care finance — that
is, how we pay for universal access to insurance coverage — will not
produce successful reform.  Reform must be holistic, with a focus on
the entire system, as well as its component parts, including whether
the system is structured to deliver the right kind of health care
services in the most appropriate setting, whether we have sufficient
quantity and kind of health care professionals and technology
geographically dispersed to provide the health care services that
people will presumably have insurance to access, and whether the system
properly incentivizes health care professionals to make decisions that
are efficient, effective, and in patients’ best interests.  This is a
massive undertaking, with a tremendous risk that important components
will be overlooked precisely because of the size of the undertaking. 
The Stark Law represents the kind of on-the-ground healthcare delivery
problems that healthcare reform must tackle.

The American Health Lawyers Association’s Public Interest Committee today released a Whitepaper entitled: “A Public Policy Discussion: Taking Measure of the Stark Law” analyzing the ” Ethics in Patient Referrals Act” (and its progeny), more commonly known collectively as the “Stark Law“, after its primary sponsor, Congressman Pete Stark,
who now counts himself among the many who believe that while the
problem the law aimed to address is real, the statute and its
multitudinous exceptions have become a nightmare.

Continue reading…